"And his coat was torn and frayed / It had seen much better days" (Jagger/Richards)

Philippines -- general

April 10, 2010

I was expecting to be depressed when I cycled down to see the corpse of the Santa Ana Racetrack yesterday and that's how it turned out.

Luckily I had a chance to enjoy Santa Ana’s shabby glory before this remnant of the American era was bulldozed. The track and its grandstand appealed to me for so many reasons.

There was the sense of space; from your seat you had uninterrupted views across the Pasig and across Makati to Rockwell. Manila seemed a lovely city from Santa Ana at night.

Then there was the shady atmosphere; the touts with fags in their mouths, the old guys who had spent a lifetime at the track, the sense of collapse and decay.

Bringing all these together was the main grandstand, an art deco building from, I would guess, the 1930s, the same period as the Sy-Quia buildings in Malate and the former Jai Alai building on Taft (thank you Lito Atienza for destroying that particular historic monument). The grandstand really was quite grand and was an important historic link to a more elegant Manila. Nothing now remains of that impressive structure but a few stumps standing defiantly above the rubble.

It does not surprise me that the racetrack is being converted to more profitable uses. After all, it occupied a huge chunk of prime urban land on the border between Manila and Makati. Even if it the track had been a profitable venture (and the tiny entrance charges, small crowds, and insignificant bets meant it almost certainly wasn’t), the realities of property prices would surely have pushed the track outside the city boundaries sooner or later (just as happened with the beautiful Kuala Lumpur racetrack in the 1990s).

Still, I wish one of the architectural preservation societies in Manila had managed to save the grandstand, though such groups have had few, if any, successes in recent years. Couldn’t some imagination have been used to convert the grand old dame of Manila horseracing into something quite distinctive?

I wonder whether anyone even took any photos of the Santa Ana grandstand before they tore it down. Or whether anyone cares about these issues at all.

From this entry in WikiPilipinas it appears the Santa Ana site is to be a mall (what a surprise). It will be run, of course, by SM, who fatuously describe themselves on billboards as “the good guys.” Thanks a lot “good guys.”

There is another great post about the racetrack from Gogirl Cafe -- it has lots of atmospheric photos (the one above was borrowed from the site). It also has a number of poignant comments from people who either lived in Santa Ana or worked at the racetrack.

January 23, 2010

This exhibition occupies only one hall, which is just the right size for a low-museum-stamina type like me. In addition to clear and well written presentations on the major events, it contains some unusual angles on the Philippine–American War. There is a separate section on African-American US soldiers, for example, and excerpts from diaries and correspondence throw light on the impact of the war on both young Americans and Filipinos. The exhibition is fair, covering both water torture by the US army (highlighted in a 2008 New Yorker article) and atrocities by the Filipino forces. Although it doesn’t use the phrase “war crimes,” it doesn’t hold back in its description of the US Army’s scorched earth policy in Samar.

Here are a few snippets I noted down:

• As is well known, the US war with Spain began with an explosion on the USS Maine in Havana harbour on 15 February 1898, which the US claimed was caused by a Spanish mine. However, an investigation in 1978 by Admiral Hyman, USN found that the probable cause was spontaneous combustion. That sets off some intriguing “what if” questions. If those molecules had not combined in such lethal way in the hold of the Maine, perhaps the Spanish–American war, which had such far-reaching consequences for the Philippines, Cuba, the USA, and Spain, might never have taken place? Or would the Americans simply have found another casus belli?
• President McKinley’s message to Congress on 11 April 1898 stated that forcible annexation of Cuba “by our code of morality, would be criminal aggression,” a comment that reads oddly when set beside his later authorization of exactly that to the Philippines.
• “Had the Filipinos been white and fought as bravely as they have, the war would have ended and her independence granted long ago,” Bishop A. Wuthers, speech to the National Afro-American Congress on 2 September 1899.
• About 20 African–American US soldiers went over to Aguinaldo’s forces, one of them becoming a general.
• This next quotation is well known, but loses none of its impact through the retelling. In October 1901, after Filipino guerrillas had killed 48 US soldiers at Balangiga in Samar, Brig. General Jacob H. Smith ordered marines under Major Littleton W. Waller to make Samar “a howling wilderness … I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn and the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms.” Smith applied the latter definition to all over the age of 10.
• In 1903, new President Theodore Roosevelt ordered “the most stern measures to pacify Samar” and Admiral Chaffee virtually declared war on the civilian population, incarcerating 300,000 people in “reconcentration camps.
• McKinley was not sure where the Philippines was when Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet.
• Although the war began because of events in Cuba, on 20 May 1902 the US Army withdrew from the island and the Cuban Republic was born (albeit as a de facto US protectorate). However, with the exception of the period of the Japanese occupation, the US was not to relinquish direct control over the Philippines until 4 July 1946.
• In 1999, the US Library of Congress reclassified the conflict from “the Philippine Insurrection” to “the Philippine–American War.”
• The exhibition contains a map of the colonial possessions of the European nations at the end of the 19th century showing the northern part of what is now Papua New Guinea as “Kaiser Wilhelm Land.” Gotta love that name.

December 10, 2009

I recently had a discussion with a foreign friend who used the Maguidanao massacre as a symbol of the Philippines’ problems. I disagreed, arguing that Mindanao has a very distinct history, dating back at least to to the 18th century Sulu sultanate. The pathologies that have characterized the island in the last 20 years—violent secessionist movements, beheading terrorists, armalite-toting warlords—all these are a consequence of the numerous unsuccessful attempts to integrate this divergent past into the general flow of Philippine history.

Mindanao is more culturally rich than other parts of the archipelago, but, because of its warped relationship with the centre, it is the negative aspects of that culture, such as the rido or vendetta (about which every columnist has become an instant expert) that have been allowed to flourish.

Finally, since President Ramos’s attempt at a negotiated solution to keep the lid on tensions was discarded by President Estrada, himself a kind of wannabe warlord, large parts of Muslim Mindanao have been under military occupation, the tragic consequences of which were brought out in a recent article (Mindanao is Dying). Under such circumstances, it was only a matter of time before something like the grisly events in Ampatuan town came about.

A few days later, I found myself taking up almost exactly the opposite point of view with a Filipino friend, who was writing off the southern island and its inhabitants. All of elements that led to the rise of the Ampatuans can be found, to a greater or lesser extent, in other parts of the Philippines, I said. What about Ilocos, are not Chavit Singson, Rodolfo Farinas, and Ferdinand Marcos perfect examples of the criminal¬–political–military nexus that characterizes provincial politics in the Philippines?

The circumstances that allowed the Ampatuans to tighten their corrosive grip on the unfortunate residents of Maguindanao were driven by national, not local dynamics. After all, Maguidanao was at the apex of the defining moment of the Arroyo presidency, the “Hello Garci” scandal. Commissioner Garcillano was in Maguidanao when he received that famous cell phone call from his patroness and it was the Ampatuans who delivered the famous 1 million vote plurality that Arroyo sought.

Given this, how can you say the Mindanao is atypical? On the contrary, it is only years “ahead” of the rest of the crumbling Philippine body politic.

I am not sure what to make of this except that I seem to be in a rather argumentative mood these days. Mindanao, different or the same? Beats me.

December 05, 2009

The only amusing part of the story on the discovery of an armoury of government-supplied weapons large enough to supply 1,500 soldiers in the Ampatuan compound was the feigned shock from the leaders of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police.

PNP chief Jesus Verzosa was taken aback on learning that the recovered firearms included two antitank weapons. He said only government forces were allowed to purchase and carry these kinds of weapons.

Pull the other one, Jesus! It has been known for years that military commanders sell arms and ammunition to anyone with the cash, even to the groups the AFP is fighting.
Selling bullets to the enemy that are used to kill your own troops, how low can you get?

This issue was brought out in Gracia Burnham’s book, In the Presence of My Enemies, in which she described her experience as a hostage of the Abu Sayyaf:

“More than once I heard Solaiman on the sat-phone calling Zamboanga, talking to a lady named Ma’am Blanco. He would give her all his specifications for guns, bullets, you name it. ‘Who are you ordering from?’ we asked him one day. ‘Oh, the army,’ he replied. ‘We pay a lot more than it should cost of course. So somebody’s making a lot of money. But at least we get what we need.’

The discovery that massacred members of the convoy were probably killed by guns from the government arsenal in Bataan comes hot on the heels of news that the army and police not only refused requests to protect the convoy but took part in the killings.

Nor did the AFP and PNP cover themselves in glory in disaster relief after Typhoon Ondoy. The very visible presence of the Indonesian military after the Sumatra earthquake was in stark contrast to the do-it-yourself approach here. Although I regularly see army trucks driving around in Manila when there is a perceived threat to national security (such as a small peaceful rally at the Edsa shrine), I saw only one army truck going down EDSA in the soggy aftermath of the typhoon, carrying unfortunate shivering young soldiers in T-shirts.

Presidential candidate Gilberto Teodoro was Defense Secretary at the time and came up with a perfect excuse for the military’s absence:

He said much of the police and military’s modest assets had been apportioned to internal security operations in line with the government policy to crush terrorism and the communist insurgency.
“The thing is, we cannot just order the AFP or the police to shift roles.”

What an incredible statement. Why not? The military and police have the equipment and the discipline to respond to disasters, which is why all over the world they are pulled in to help out. Yet here the security forces are too busy chasing NGO activists and communist phantoms to do the same.

There are times when you wonder whether we might almost be better without any security forces. Sure, private armies would flourish, but they do anyway and without the AFP and the PNP around at least it might be harder for them to buy bullets.

August 01, 2009

Moved by the television coverage of the death of Cory Aquino, I visited the wake at La Salle Greenhills last night. As when I visited FPJ’s funeral four years’ ago, my intention was to play the curious foreigner and get the feel of the event, but joining the queue to see the body seemed the best way to avoid the torrential rain so that’s what I did.

Sadly, the wake was much like Cory’s presidency; despite all the talk about “the Filipino people” the people had to stand still while a parade of the entitled ones waltzed past with their newly coiffed hair. After moving about 50 yards in an hour I gave up (though not without shaking Satur Ocampo’s hand, which gave me a thrill).

***

Cory’s passing is a huge landmark in post-Marcos Philippines. We are no longer living in a post-EDSA world, but in a medium-sized country with king-sized problems, most of which have been either exacerbated or ignored by the four administrations since 1986.

Although Cory’s administration was reviled by contemporary critics, her presidency doesn’t look that bad now that we have the Estrada and Arroyo governments to compare it with. At least Aquino could legitimately blame the seven coup attempts for some of the lack of progress during her six years in office. Erap and GMA can blame only themselves for their failures (not that they will of course).

Aquino’s gender made her task much particularly difficult. Although in comparison with its neighbours the Philippines has an excellent record of female participation in business and government, an acceptance of female equality was not universally held in the 1980s, certainly not by the macho thorns in her side, Honasan and Enrile. To them Aquino was simply an amateur in the game of power, a “mere housewife” as Marcoss called her during the 1986 election campaign.

It is hard to see Aquino’s appointment of Juan Ponce Enrile as Defense Secretary as anything other than a disastrous mistake. On a high from the fortuitous timing of his betrayal of Marcos, Enrile spent the whole of his time in office trying to undermine Aquino and when he was finally dismissed, he was accused of masterminding the 1987 coup attempt.

At critical points in history, the character of the leader is at least as important as the achievements of his or her programs and the immediate post-Marcos period was such a time. It was Cory Aquino’s essential goodness and her humility (the hardest quality to fake) that brought the crowds to La Salle and caused former cabinet colleagues to sob yesterday as they recalled her graciousness. She was a “good boss” one of them said—a minor quality perhaps, but I wonder how many heads of state you could say that about?

***

For those under 35, the television coverage of Cory Aquino’s death will have brought back vivid personal memories of a now closed chapter. The endless coverage of the assassination of Ninoy, Cory giving the Laban signal with her outsized glasses and pleasant Tita’s smile, the hosing of demonstrators, Laurel, youthful versions of Teddy-Boy Locsin and Nene Pimentel … all this is now part of History.

So too is the only moment when the Philippines genuinely led the world. People Power was used as a model for peaceful uprisings from Chile to the Ukraine (in fact according to Katrina David in an interview yesterday the anti-Pinochet crowds in Santiago even chanted “Corazon, Corazon”).

What is lost above all with the death of Cory Aquino is the sense of hope that she gave the country; the possibility that just once simple goodness and a spirit of human togetherness might be enough to win out over naked self-interest. Future historians may look back on that aspiration as hopelessly naïve, yet its impracticality increases rather than diminishes the people who held it.

***

Here are a couple of other appreciations of Tita Cory that I liked.

Say what you will about her administration, the illusions dashed and opportunities missed, but she was decent to us. She never mocked us, made fun of our hopes, or knowingly insulted our intelligence. Born to privilege, she never acted the spoiled brat. ... In mourning for Tita Cory we’re really mourning for ourselves and what could’ve been. Jessica Zafra

I truly marvel at how, with every single challenge, Cory did her best.

She was the sheltered daughter of a wealthy clan who suddenly found herself subjected to the indignity of being strip-searched on her visits to her jailed husband.

She was a housewife with five children who was asked to unite a nation in fighting a tyrant.

She was an old woman, content in her retirement, who never faltered in her fight against corruption and made a stand against two presidents who succeeded her.

July 26, 2009

Melissa Roxas’s simple and matter-of-a-fact affidavit recounting her abduction, torture, and eventual release by the Philippine military deserves to become one of the key primary sources on the Arroyo presidency.

I had to keep reminding myself that this was not a story from Argentina’s “dirty war” or Pinochet’s Chile, but of an event that happened a few weeks go and a few miles from where I sit. For all I know something similar is going on as you read this. As the recent Inquirer retrospective on Arroyo’s presidency pointed out, military abuses and a culture of impunity have been a hallmark of her rule.

The affidavit is only 5 pages, here is an extract:

22. I was brought back to my cell blindfolded again and handcuffed at the front and I was made to lie down and after a short while, the iron barred doors were banged making clanking sound and I was taken aback and two men entered my cell with one of the man calling the other, “Tatay”, and a man pulled my cuffed hands up raising me on a sitting position and then a fist struck me at my upper sternum and it hurt and then a thumb was pressed strongly to my throat (I heard somebody saying “huh!...huh…huh.”) choking me, making me suffocate for quite a time and when he released the pressure I gagged and I coughed and then he struck me with his fist on my left jaw ringing my ears and numbing my jaw and they were telling me, “Ang tigas ng ulo mo. Sasagot ka na sa mga tanong.” He kept repeating the questions and his pressure on my throat and fists to my jaw. An hour after, they left. But before they left, he said, “matigas ‘to. Barilin na lang natin” and I prepared for the worst;

23. It must have been very late night or early dawn, when he came back to me and he dragged me to the first room and I sensed that there was a kind of leader of the group who kept on whispering on that person who was manhandling me and two other men and the man who got me from my cell asked me, “handa ka bang mamatay?” and I answered, “Opo” and then he told me, “bago namin patayin ang isang tao, mapapaihi at mapapatae muna namin siya”;

24. The whispering man kept whispering questions to be asked and the manhandling man kept asking the questions and I told him that I have rights and that I was demanding for my lawyer but when he asked me about my name, I told them but when they asked other questions, I did not answer and he would hit me on the chest strongly and I would lose breath and gasped for air after and then he would press my throat with his thumb and say “Huh…huh…huh!” and I would gag and then he would hit me on my jaws, ringing my ears and numbing my jaws and he repeated this and added another one by holding my head with his two hands and banging the back of my head repeatedly and each time it hit the wall, I would see a flash of white bright light and ringing in my ears and again the pressure to my throat with the “Huh … huh…huh.” And saying to me, “ayaw mo pa din magsasalita” and then punched me in my rib cage and I crumpled …

June 12, 2009

I thought I would post this video of an amok Bulgarian buffalo masquerading as a Philippine carabao both because it is of interest in itself, and because it will give readers from outside the country some idea of provincial life here (and of our inimitable news presenters). I saw the video on Howie Severino’s site—Howie is the journalist in the video and this is the description of the event on his blog.

This water buffalo was anything but gentle. After creating havoc along a kilometer-long stretch of the parade route, it stopped to catch its breath next to a waiting shed. Some brave souls detached the wagon and tied the carabao to the waiting shed. A policeman hit the carabao on the head with a plastic chair, provoking the crazed creature into charging spectators who until then were enjoying the rare spectacle. The carabao ripped the waiting shed from its moorings and dragged the metal wreckage a few hundred meters.

No other carabao has run amok in the long history of the Pulilan festival, according to town mayor Vicente Esguerra. He also approved of the town police’s decision not to shoot the Bulgarian buffalo in the midst of its rampage, despite some calls from spectators. “There are so many people here because of the fiesta. If the police used a gun, someone could have been hurt,” Esguerra said.

About an hour after the carabao became the unexpected attraction, it was too tired to resist any longer and was loaded on a trailer for its trip home to Plaridel. Mayor Esguerra said he would not allow Bulgarian buffalos to participate in the parade any more.

I do like that deadpan last sentence.

Although I am sorry for those members of the audience who were scared or hurt by the buffalo’s rampage, I can’t rid myself of all sympathy for this poor beast who must have been very confused and irritated by the festival crowds. After some days at work I feel like behaving in exactly the same way ...

August 13, 2008

This evening I stood behind a woman at Seven Eleven who bought three packets of Marlboro Lights for P110. What kind of an incentive to quit is that? Even someone on the minimum wage here can easily afford to kill themselves by smoking cigarettes.

To give you an idea of how incredibly cheap that is, a pack of Marlboro in the UK costs £5.50, about P460. Three packs would therefore cost the equivalent of P1,380, or over 12 times more than they cost here.

So since a flat cigarette tax would have such huge benefits for both government revenues and for public health, why isn’t this tax implemented tomorrow? Because, as an article in the British Medical Journal put it, “the Philippine tobacco industry is "the strongest tobacco lobby in Asia".

Hell, Lucio Tan, the owner of Fortune tobacco doesn’t even pay his current taxes. Those of you with long memories will surely remember how during the presidency of Tan’s friend Erap a tax evasion case in 2000 was conveniently thrown out because the Department of Justice conveniently forgot to file a records request on time (thanks Erap!)

A Philippine court has dismissed a 25.27 billion peso tax-evasion case against Lucio Tan, a Chinese-Filipino tycoon and close friend of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, on a technicality, media reports said Thursday.

The Court of Appeals dismissed the case against Tan, 66, because the Department of Justice filed a records request 11 days late, the reports said.

Even as I type this I am sure the domestic and the US tobacco companies operating in the Philippines are preparing some nice fat brown envelopes to make sure that that inconvenient IMF report is quietly shelved.

August 10, 2008

The socioeconomic structure of the Philippines may be as fixed as the stars in the heavens, but its substructure is amazingly fluid.

Names*

Filipinos have a more casual attitude to names than most. The other day I met someone called Grace. At least that is what everyone calls her but it turns out her name is really Sophia, nickname Pia. So where did Grace come from? “When I came to my Manila everyone called me Grace, I don’t know why!” Perhaps in a few years, Grace/Sophia/Pia will add an “h” to her one of her names to give it that little bit of class.

Has any other country had a head of state with a stage name? President Estrada/Ejercito/Erap (two of whose charmless sons carry the name “Estrada”, with the lovely JV bearing his dad’s natural name “Ejercito”) with his famously hazy family boundaries and interrupted presidency is a good example of impermanence in Philippine life.

Families

The fluidity of familial life here is partly a consequence of the wanderings of the priapic Filipino male. Last week, for example, a friend told us that he was startled on a visit to his family home by a reference to his bunso (youngest sibling). “But I am the youngest”, he protested. Well, it turns out he wasn’t the bunso of the family, although it must have been a bit traumatic for him in his forties to discover he had a younger half-brother.

Traumatic but not at all unusual; I am sure almost all Filipino readers will know of similar tales.

Families are loosely structured in other ways too. A few years ago I noticed a new photo of a baby on my assistant’s desk. Since she had not manifested any of the usual physical changes to that precede the birth of a child I assumed the baby must have been a niece or a nephew, but it turned out that a younger and poorer relative had had got herself in trouble and my henceforth my assistant would be bringing up the child as one of her own.

Only yesterday, Frayed and I were offered a baby! There was even a “viewing”!

The reasons for all this are quite varied, and, include the generosity of Filipino families; the notion that wealthier families have a responsibility to their poorer kin; the balikbayan (overseas worker) experience; the prevalence of intense poverty that makes it impossible for some mothers to bring up their children; the discouragement of contraceptives by the Catholic Church and politicians like former Manila Mayor Atienza; and, as mentioned, the habitual infidelity of many husbands.

Nor are the consequences necessarily bad. The famous adaptability of Filipinos, which enables them to blend into apparently radically different societies with relative ease, probably has its roots in the shifting tides of family life. From an early age Philippine children experience change more frequently and have to learn to accommodate it.

* One of the best discussions of Philippine names is Matthew Sutherland’s “Rhose, by Any Other Name”, 10 years old now but as relevant as ever.

July 29, 2008

The Philippine national project may have failed to produce either a national ideology or a functioning state, but that doesn’t mean the country is not politically organized. On the contrary, the Philippine political system is more extensive than those in many countries.

This benefits of this were recently quantified in a Save the Children report that placed the Philippines and Peru top of a list of developing countries for vaccinating children and treating them for critical diseases.

I can well believe it. Several years ago, I attended a measles immunization mission as an observer in a poor neighborhood near Antipolo. I was very impressed with how smoothly the campaign was carried out. We were met by a female kagawad who seemed to know exactly was required of her. The residents were supportive and friendly and the system of chalking doors to indicate that the occupants had been immunized was beautifully simple. I couldn’t help wondering whether I had been dragged to a poster project, but I was assured that it is like that in most barangays. I am sure that the well established set of grassroots connections here is the main reason for the Philippines’ excellent performance in the Save the Children report. (Of course that same set of connections can be used to service corrupt national interests too, but, hey this is a positive post.)

As an aside, we have nothing like this in the UK. The atomized nature of contemporary British society means that once the national and local governments have gouged you for every last penny they kindly leave you to your own devices. There ain’t no barangay captain to negotiate between competing neighbourhood interests in Britain—in fact the attitude seems to be “Noisy neighbour? Live it with pal”, even if you are an 80-year-old granny being harassed by teenage yobs.

Finally, in case there are any historians out there who want to argue that, far from belng “politics from below”, as I have implied, the barangay system was a Marcos creation, I would argue that all the old fraud did was to rename the existing barrios. Marcos didn’t need to create the barangays because to establish and run such small-scale organizations is as natural to Pinoys as the national project seems to be alien to them.